In 2020, Amanda Lundberg discovered she was pregnant. The working mother already had an infant daughter and knew that obtaining care for a new child would be difficult. She immediately began putting her soon-to-be-born baby on childcare waiting lists.
Three months after her son Luke was born, she still had no care. Lundberg took an extra month of unpaid maternity leave. She relied on her family until they had to return to their homes out of state. The triage nurse asked her employer if she could work from home, but they said no.
While Lundberg found her job rewarding, she decided to quit. She now works from home as a freelance nursing writer while caring for her two young children.
“I can’t complain about it because there is no other option,” she says.
Lundberg lived in a town of fewer than 100,000 people in Whatcom County, Washington, much of which is considered a childcare desert.
“There were only three places in town that accepted children,” she says. “The licensed daycares accepted anywhere from eight to 10 infants. Out of 100,000 people, that’s nothing.”
What is a Childcare Desert?
A childcare desert is a geographic area where the population of children under five years old has little or no access to quality childcare. Fifty-one percent of people in the United States live in a childcare desert, which tends to be in low-income, Hispanic and urban communities.
To care for their children, parents are making concessions like sacrificing quality for services that are less expensive or closer to their homes. Facing multi-year waitlists, some parents are quitting their jobs.
Lundberg recently received an email from one of the waitlisted childcare facilities. The email was not to inform her of an opening but to find out if she still wanted to be on the waitlist. Lundberg filled out the application in October 2020, almost two years ago.
“Are you kidding me?” she said laughing. “It’s still not happening?”
Lack of Options
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the essential role that childcare plays in people being able to work.
“This is a long-standing challenge for families with young children,” says Lauren Hogan, Managing Director of Policy and Professional Advancement at the National Association for the Education of Young Children or NAEYC. “Parents have long struggled to find and afford quality childcare and the pandemic decimated an already fragile industry and system.”
Nearly half of childcare providers shuttered their facilities during the early COVID-19 shutdowns, according to a 2020 survey by NAEYC. Of the ones that remained open, 63% said without additional funding, they would have to shut their doors permanently if they remained closed for longer than a month.
“Childcare has always operated right on the edge of financial viability,” says Hogan. “Because we don’t fund it as a public good in this country and don’t make the state and federal investments at the level that they need, it falls on families who can’t afford to pay what it costs and on educators who have been subsidizing the system with their low wages.”
Childcare deserts often leave parents working non-traditional hours or shift work in a bind, says Kim Kofron, Director of Early Childhood for Children at Risk, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving lives for children.
“Those families are stuck,” she says. “Do they go back to work? Do they not go back to work? Do they find a lower-paying job? Do they carry as many hours? Families are also sacrificing the quality of care because they need a place to put their children so they can go to work and pay the bills.”
Lack of Affordability
The younger the child, the higher the cost.
Parents spent $12,111 for full-time center-based care for an infant between 2018 and 2020, a rise of 5%. It costs a little less to care for a toddler or four-year-old — $11,379 and $10,008 respectively. In some states, workers spend almost 30% of their income caring for their kids.
Families living in childcare deserts are less likely to use licensed providers to manage those costs. Unlicensed care can be less expensive, but may not have the same quality control as licensed ones.
“These are sometimes in-home daycares where there isn’t oversight and these are situations where parents are afraid to bring their kids,” says Dr. Amanda Zelechoski, Professor of Psychology and Founding Director of Clinical Training at Purdue University Northwest. “It’s not the same thing as saying there are a lot of options. That’s different from high quality and affordable options.”
Childcare deserts are disproportionately located in areas with higher concentrations of families living at or below the poverty line. Kofron notes that families with incomes slightly above the poverty line can’t take advantage of programs or subsidies funded by the federal government.
“There’s not enough funding to serve all those eligible families,” she says. “Then you have your families that don’t qualify that make over the income threshold and even solidly middle-income families that childcare takes a chunk out of their budget each year.”
Economic Impact of Childcare Deserts
In April 2020, parents of young children left the labor force at alarming rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Mothers were more likely to have walked away from their jobs because of caregiving responsibilities and less likely to return to work.
Childcare deserts are a secret driver behind the labor shortage, says Kate Zamora, Director of Partner Success for The Mom Project, an organization committed to helping women remain active in the workforce.
“You can’t go to work if you can’t find anyone to take care of your child,” she says. “As a professional, it would be very difficult and I’m speaking from experience. During the COVID pandemic, I worked at home full time with a toddler and that isn’t sustainable.”
Childcare deserts are a one-two economic punch for women of color (WOC). Not only do WOC make up a majority of the childcare workforce, but they are also often the ones facing difficulties getting care for their children.
“The hurt of the pandemic and the staffing challenges are falling on women who are working in childcare settings and on the women who are having to withdraw from the workforce,” says Hogan.
Every year parents are out of work, they lose almost $30 billion in wages. $8 billion of that is due to the lack of childcare. Kofron says the ripple effect of childcare deserts can be felt throughout the economy.
“It’s not just the childcare workers losing money because the kids aren’t there or the families are losing money because they can’t go to work,” she says. “It’s also the business and the economy losing money because those people can’t get to work.”
Need for Solutions
Grants to increase supply in states like New York, Nevada and California and federal programs like the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which includes $39 billion in new childcare funding, have sought to help eradicate childcare deserts.
Kofron says while national and state initiatives are important, work needs to be done to repair the childcare system and fairly compensate childcare workers. Research shows childcare workers make near-poverty wages of $11.65 an hour.
“We need to spend some time thinking ‘bigger picture’ of how we want to build a system that’s good for childcare providers and early childhood educators, as well as parents and family,” she says.
Some companies have tried to tackle the issue by partnering with nonprofits or local organizations where their employees live. A growing number of companies are also offering backup care, stipends or on-site childcare to employees and are using the perks as a recruitment and retention tool.
“Companies need to look at it as a benefit and as a holistic package to offer to workers if they’re looking to drive diversity in their organization,” says Zamora. “It’s very important to have diversity of thought and diversity of experience and the research shows that parents bring that to a team in spades.”
Lundberg wishes her employer could have accommodated her request to work from home. But she’s not looking back. About a month ago, her family moved from Washington to a town in Douglas County, Colorado. A significant portion of the county is considered a childcare desert.
Lundberg is no stranger to the struggle. One daycare she found was more expensive than the income she earned as a nurse. The other one informed her they were accepting applications for fall 2023, more than a year from now.
The mother of two has braced herself for another long wait.
“My oldest, she’s almost three. She’ll be in preschool by then and probably kindergarten at this rate,” she says jokingly. “But for my one-year-old, I’m still looking for something.”
